


Buried Secrets

by sanctum_c



Series: Fall Festival 2019 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Cetra (Compilation of FFVII), Cetra Artefacts, F/M, Post-Canon, Revisiting the Shinra mansion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctum_c/pseuds/sanctum_c
Summary: Tifa, Cloud and Yuffie return to Nibelheim to make sure the last remaining traces of the Jenova project are gone.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Series: Fall Festival 2019 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979914
Kudos: 30





	Buried Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'Cameos'

Visiting Nibelheim never became more comfortable, and this latest occasion was no exception – despite the Mako taint in the air near faded to nothing. Hard to articulate how alien the place felt. At first glance it was a town five years out of time and impossibly here. At a closer look it revealed hundreds of inconsistencies, errors, shortcuts and mistakes. No need to venture into the long-since abandoned shell of what purported to be Tifa’s house; Cloud was likewise reluctant to go home and find it still empty.

A report based on investigation by Reeve indicated the facsimile town would not last long. Not only a poor replica, but shoddily made too. Shinra’s cover-up assembled in haste and not remotely equipped to deal with the weather below the peak of Mount Nibel. The houses, the water tower, the hotel, the shops; all would collapse on their own, rotting and crumbling away over time – returning to the Planet much like the prior inhabitants.

Not why she, Cloud and Yuffie were here.

Set apart from the town as it ever was, the Shinra mansion was far from a copy. The dilapidated but still sound mansion stood, guarding its myriad secrets behind fake walls and with monster strewn corridors. Here remained the last instance of Shinra’s dabbling with Jenova – as far as anyone could guess or admit. The records and main site of the Jenova project, Cloud and Zack’s captivity, Sephiroth’s birth, Vincent’s transformation, and who knew what else remained.

Little time to deal with the potential hazard before. Little desire to come back to the town. But the worry of what might remain here, the fear some vestige of Jenova might still lurk waiting to reawaken, re-infect, restart a sequence of events to once again one day call the heavens down upon them – and the humans on the Planet with no Cetra to turn to in those dark, final moments. They might avoid the same fate as before, an intercession from the Planet itself, but too risky to depend on.

“We could just torch the place?” Yuffie dithered on the threshold. “Not like there’s anything in here to save.”

Tifa winced. Fire. As always. “It might work. But, not convinced it’d do anything but make getting down to the lab tricky. We don’t want to leave that stuff down there.”

Yuffie rolled her eyes. “Sooner we get it done, the sooner we can get out of here.” Cloud shot her a smile and headed in.

“Fine!” Yuffie stalked after him.

No monsters in sight. Something of a relief, but hard to feel calm. The main building by day did not have the tension of night-time. Gloomy but the interior was clear enough. They searched the ground floor; initially thoroughly and later more lacklustre, no one wanting to take longer than necessary here. Broken furniture, empty shelves, water-stained, illegible pages, mouldering food and dust the only things they found here. It made sense; the secrets remained buried deep below.

A break before the plunge; they retreated to the doorstep and ate lunch. Yuffie fidgeted with a book, and Tifa leant her head on Cloud’s shoulder to think about something other than what awaited. Not terribly effective. With a sigh, she suggested they resume; and get this done before dark. She sought out Cloud’s hand and gripped it when they ascended the stairs and pushed open the false wall.

The stair spiralled down into darkness; Yuffie dropped a handful of glow-sticks down as an initial marker – each had their own torch besides. They trailed down in single file, wooden steps creaking under their weight, the atmosphere heavier the deeper they moved. In the depths only darkness awaited, scythed through by their torches. To the left was the room once Vincent’s resting place. Little else but sealed coffins there now. No stomach for finding out if others like Vincent dozed there or they were filled with other cast-offs from Hojo’s investigations.

The Planet had reclaimed the Mako from the tubes once containing Cloud and Zack. The library was damp and mouldering now. Perhaps it would be enough to let the deteriorating atmosphere take the papers too. Still risky. Jenova might be gone, but who was to say these processes could not see new use in the future by someone with Hojo’s mindset? Tifa shivered.

She and Cloud took opposite sides of the room, checking the shelves and pulling anything seeming of note from the shelves to leave in piles along the way. Yuffie was fumbling in the lab, sending glassware crashing to the floor at irregular intervals until-

“Hey guys? Found something weird.”

“Weird?” The shock of worry faded. Weird was not necessarily trouble. Weird might be okay.

“Yeah. Come see.” Yuffie had opened a locked cabinet and held what looked a lot like Materia. Odd, over-sized, yellow. About the same size as the Black Matera. “Look.” She held it out.

Unlike other Materia, the orb she held was not smooth. A complex knot of lines, whorls, curves and what might be words in an unfamiliar glyph set jutted out above the surface of the sphere, the remainder of the material cut away. “What is-“ Cloud reached for it and stopped.

“You too?”

Cloud nodded. “What?” Tifa glanced between them; Cloud held it out. The familiar sense of knowing from the contact; much like how she once – briefly – knew how to summon Meteor. But- It faded too quick and evaporated. “What- What was that? It’s like... Like there’s a spell but it’s-“

“Incomplete.” Yuffie nodded. “Like it’s only part of it.” She was holding a similar Materia, though the design on the surface was different. “There’s more of them. This one’s different too.”

“How many?” Cloud peered into the cabinet.

“Seven by my count. Not sure if that’s all of them.”

Tifa reached past her for a notebook held shut by a number of rubber bands. Someone – Hojo, Gast, Lucrecia, some unnamed lab technician – had transcribed the patterns on the Materia surface on the page. But contrary to Yuffie’s estimation, an eighth example existed within the pages. “I think there’s one more somewhere.”

Yuffie cursed. “I want to see what it does if you have all of them.”

Tifa flipped to the front. “Not sure if you do. These were found when they were excavating for the reactor.”

“Makes sense. Mako rich environment, get them occurring naturally-“

“They were found with Jenova.”

The name near echoed around the lab. Silence, distant dripping and claustrophobic stillness. “With her.” Yuffie tipped the Materia back off her hands and into its resting spot. “You mean they’re hers?”

Tifa shook her head. “Not clear.” She peered at the page. “Looks like they were found around her.”

“A barrier perhaps?” Cloud turned the Materia he still held over in his hands. “Maybe these were what kept her buried.”

“Maybe-“ Tifa flipped ahead. “The notes are more concerned with the spell within them.”

Yuffie shivered. “Just what we need. Hey, maybe we should hang onto them though. Just in case?”

Cloud nodded. “Don’t want to think about the idea. But if she or another like her comes back-“

“If we are right about this.” Tifa closed the book and hugged it to her chest. Clearing the basement took far longer than intended, but nowhere else did the strange set of materia get a mention – nor did they find the implied eighth sphere. Should be nothing, but hard not to worry about why and where it was now.


End file.
